Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to home entertainment, and more specifically to techniques for providing an immersive playtime environment using interactive devices.
Description of the Related Art
Computer graphics technology has come a long way since video games were first developed. Relatively inexpensive 3D graphics engines now provide nearly photo-realistic interactive game play on hand-held video game, home video game and personal computer hardware platforms costing only a few hundred dollars. These video game systems typically include a hand-held controller, game controller, or, in the case of a hand-held video game platform, an integrated controller. A user interacts with the controller to send commands or other instructions to the video game system to control a video game or other simulation. For example, the controller may include a joystick and buttons operated by the user.
While video games allow the user to interact directly with the video game system, such interactions primarily influence the graphical depiction shown on the video game device (or on a connected display), and rarely influence any other objects outside of the virtual world. That is, a user may specify an input to the video game system, indicating that the user's avatar should perform a jump action, and in response the video game system could display the user's avatar jumping. However, such interactions are typically limited to the virtual world, and any interactions outside the virtual world are limited (e.g., a hand-held gaming device could vibrate when certain actions occur).
Generally, with respect to audio equipment, sound quality and cost savings are frequently at odds with one another. That is, while high quality audio equipment can be manufactured that produces very high quality audio output, such audio equipment is typically expensive to produce. Likewise, inexpensive audio output devices can be manufactured frequently such devices are limited in terms of the frequencies they can output and generally the sound quality is lower on very inexpensive devices. Moreover, some devices may lack the computing resources (e.g., processor, memory, communication module, etc.) to receive and playback high quality audio. For example a particular device may have insufficient memory capacity to store an uncompressed version of a particular audio effect, and thus such a device may be required to use a compressed, lower quality version of the audio effect.